A month earlier, this was the track whose ending fooled Peel into thinking he was allowing listeners to hear a bonus track on Repulse’s Heads EP, only for him to discover that it was all still part of Barriers. You can go to around 3:30 to see whether it would have caught you out in a similar way.
I didn’t shortlist Barriers on that 21/2/93 show, but it caught my attention on this show. Given that Repulse came from Larne in Northern Ireland, like my favourite band of early 1993, Therapy?, I can only imagine that had I known this when I was approaching my 17th birthday, I would have considered Larne to be the centre of the musical universe, rather than Seattle.
Based on what I heard in Barriers - and indeed on the whole of the Heads EP - Repulse rocked just as hard as Therapy?, but lacked the vocal roar of Andy Cairns, and so sounded a far more winsome proposition. Instead, they applied effects to the vocals with Barriers boasting a tremolo vocal. Unfortunately, this makes them hard to hear when buried under the avalanche of noise, but Barriers, which I felt was the best track on the EP, appealed to me not least for its rock /metal jig opening riff.
In their best moments, Repulse reminded me of the art-metal of Milk and the heavier moments in my 1992 Festive Fifty winner., thus making their inclusion here something of an inevitability.
Video courtesy of Repulse - Topic
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